Computing luminaries Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Nigel Shadbolt have joined forces with the government to launch a website making public data available for reuse.

Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web, joined Digital Britain minister Stephen Timms and Professor Nigel Shadbolt of the University of Southampton on Thursday to launch the public beta for data.gov.uk.

"Making public data available for reuse is about increasing accountability and transparency and letting people create new, innovative ways of using it," Berners-Lee said in a statement.

"Government data should be a public resource. By releasing it, we can unlock new ideas for delivering public services, help communities and society work better, and let talented entrepreneurs and engineers create new businesses and services."

The website will make over 2,500 datasets from across government available for developers and businesses to create mashups, software that combines data from two or more sources to create web applications.

The datasets will be made available under an open licence, which allows the data to be reused by anyone.

Tom is a technology reporter for ZDNet.com, writing about all manner of security and open-source issues.Tom had various jobs after leaving university, including working for a company that hired out computers as props for films and television, and a role turning the entire back catalogue of a publisher into e-books.Tom eventually found tha...
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